A pioneer aviator in Australia

A pioneer aviator in Australia

This is Joseph Hammond, in his Bristol Boxkite aircraft which made the first sustained flight in Australia in 1911, But was Jerseyman Adolphus Tostevin there to watch?

Jerseyman Adolphus Tostevin is in the middle of the picture standing behind the cockpit. Although this picture is from a newspaper cutting describing it as the 1911 flight of a Bristol Boxkite, this is a much later craft. The Boxkite, as seen in the other two photographs on this page, had no cockpit. The pilot sat on top of the lower wing

The first person to fly in West Australia was Joseph Joel Hammond who, despite his surname, was a New Zealander, and had no connections with Jersey.

Jerseyman was there

However, Adolphus Theodore Tostevin, a Jerseyman who had emigrated to Australia at the age of two in 1874, can allegedly be seen in this photograph above, but it cannot, as suggested in a later newspaper report, be of Mr Hammond’s Bristol Boxkite aircraft at the end of its 45-minute flight at Perth’s Belmont Racecourse on 9 January 1911.

Mr Tostevin is standing behind the cockpit. It is not known whether he had any involvement with the flight or was just an interested spectator. Although there were undoubtedly Hammonds in Australia at the time, whose family originated in Jersey, Joseph Hammond, who is also named in some contemporary reports as John Joseph, was from a Yorkshire family.

Demonstrations

Before his flight in Perth nobody had flown for more than about five minutes in Australia, and he went on to give demonstrations throughout the country. <gallery widths="300px" heights="200px" perrow="3" align=center style= "color: darkgreen;font-family:garamond;font-size:12pt;font-weight: normal;text-align:center;font-style: italic;letter-spacing: 1px; cellspacing= 30px;padding: 20px 20px 30px 20px;">

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